“I understand,” said Madame de Sourdis. “But will you at least permit one thing?”
“It is not for me to permit,” said Hector, “but rather for you to order.”
“Will you allow me to ask the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte for their assent to Claire’s marriage? Connected as I am to Madame Bonaparte, I can hardly do otherwise. It is simply a step that etiquette demands.”
“Yes, but on the condition that if they refuse, we will proceed anyway.”
“If they refuse, you will carry off my darling Claire and I shall come to forgive you wherever you have taken her. But rest assured, they will not refuse me.”
And with that assurance, permission was granted to Madame de Sourdis to seek the blessing of the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte on the marriage of Claire de Sourdis to Monsieur le Comte Hector de Sainte-Hermine.
THERE WAS ONE MAN whom Bonaparte hated, feared, and tolerated all at the same time. He is the man who appeared for a moment to talk to Mademoiselle de Fargas when she was setting her conditions for delivering up the Companions of Jehu.
Bonaparte, when he began pulling away from the influence of Fouché, was obeying that admirable instinct more typical of animals than of humans: to remove oneself from beasts that may prove to be harmful.
Joseph Fouché, Minister of the Police, was a creature both ugly and harmful. It is rare that what is ugly is good, and in Fouché’s case, his morality, or rather his immorality, was equal to his ugliness.
Bonaparte saw men as nothing but means or obstacles to him. For Bonaparte the general, Fouché, on the 18th Brumaire, had been a means. For Bonaparte the First Consul, Fouché could indeed become an obstacle. He who had conspired against the Directory in favor of the Consulate might as easily conspire now against the Consulate in favor of some other government. Fouché had become a man whom Bonaparte needed to bring down after having raised him up, and given the current political situation, bringing him down would be difficult. For Fouché was one of those men who, as they climb, cling to every rough edge, hold on to every farrow, make every mark and scar their own so they never want any point of support at any level once they have arrived.
Indeed, Fouché was attached to the Republic by his vote to have the king killed; to the Terror, by his bloody incursions into Lyon and Nevers; to the Thermidorians, by his role in bringing down Robespierre; to Bonaparte, by his participation in the 18th Brumaire; and to Josephine, through the terror that had been inspired by Joseph and Lucien, Fouché’s avowed enemies. He was attached to the Royalists by services he had rendered to individuals as Minister of the Police, after having attacked the class as a whole when he was proconsul. As director of public opinion, he had turned the office to his own uses, and his police, instead of serving the general populace, had become simply Fouché’s police, a force in service to the minister’s schemes. All over Paris, all over France, Fouché’s agents sang in praise of his abilities. Stories of his extraordinary skill abounded, the best indicator of that skill being his ability to make everyone believe the stories to be true.
Fouché had been Minister of the Police since the 18th Brumaire. No one, not even Bonaparte himself, could understand how the First Consul could have allowed Fouché to have such powerful influence over him. The situation bothered Bonaparte increasingly. Outside Fouché’s presence, when the minister’s magnetism no longer had any effect, in his every cell Bonaparte rebelled against Fouché’s sway. When the First Consul spoke of him, his words, cutting and spiteful, betrayed his anger. Yet when Fouché next appeared, the lion again lay down, calmed if not tamed.
One thing in particular bothered Bonaparte: Fouché never entered wholeheartedly into his grandiose plans, unlike his brothers Joseph and Lucien, who not only entered into them but helped to move them forward. One day, though, Bonaparte did have it out with Fouché.
“Be careful,” the Minister of the Police had said, “if you restore the royalty, you will have worked for the Bourbons, for sooner or later they will get back on the throne that you have reestablished. Nobody would dare to prophesy what combination of lucky events and of cataclysms we might have to live through before that happened, but we need nothing more than our own intelligence to judge how long you and your descendants would need to fear such a possibility. You are moving rapidly in the direction of the old regime, in form if not in content, so that occupation of the throne will soon be just a question not of government but of which family sits in it. If France must give up its hard-fought-for freedom and return to the good pleasure of the monarchy, why should it not prefer the former race of kings that gave us Henri IV and Louis XIV? You have given France nothing but the despotism of the sword!”
Bonaparte bit his lip as he listened, but he did listen. And in that moment decided to abolish the Ministry of Police. On that very Monday, at his brother’s insistence—he had gone to spend the day with his brother at Mortefontaine—he signed an abolition order and put it in his pocket.
The next day, on his return to Paris, though pleased with his decision, he knew what a blow it would be for Josephine. So he tried to be charming with her when he got back, which gave some hope to the poor woman, for whenever she looked beyond her husband’s gaiety or sadness, beyond his ill humor or cheerfulness, she saw nothing but divorce.
Seated in her boudoir, he was giving orders to Bourrienne when she slipped over to him and, sitting in his lap, stroked his hair and then put her fingers near his mouth for him to kiss them. When his kiss met her burning hand, she asked, “Why did you not take me with you yesterday?”
“Where?” he asked.
“Wherever you went.”
“I went to Mortefontaine, and since I know there’s some hostility between you and Joseph.…”
“Oh, and you could also add between me and Lucien. I say Lucien as well as Joseph because both of them are hostile to me. I am not hostile to anyone. I could ask for nothing better than to get along with your two brothers, but they hate me. So you should realize how worried I am whenever you are with them.”
“Relax. All we discussed yesterday was politics.”
“Yes, politics. Like Caesar with Anthony. Did they try the wrappings of royalty on you?”
“What? You know Roman history?”
“My